1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic devices and, more particularly, to loading font glyphs for use on an electronic device.
2. Description of the Related Art
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present invention, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
An electronic device having a user interface, such as a display, may be able to present information to a user in a number of formats. For example, a portable music player may be able to operate in several user-selectable languages, such as English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, etc. Accordingly, in order to enable a user to select an interface language, the electronic device may include characters for numerous different languages. Depending on the number of languages available on the electronic device, the number of characters required to be stored may be extensive. In addition, a single language may be available in a variety of fonts, typefaces, sizes, and styles.
Each character in a language or font may be represented by a different glyph. Additionally, based on the type of font being used, different sizes and styles of a character in a given font may be represented by different glyphs. For example, bitmap fonts consist of a separate glyph for each typeface character and size, whereas outline fonts consist of a single glyph for each typeface character which can be resized based on the font size. Accordingly, an electronic device may include a very large number of glyphs representing various letters, numbers, and other symbols in different languages and fonts. The glyphs may be stored, for example, on a hard drive or on a type of non-volatile read-only memory (ROM).